The Calder Game

by Blue Balliett

  He squeezed his eyes tight and, pressing on the lids, saw islands of red and maybe yellow. Red, the energetic sound of — of — suddenly he couldn’t think of anything red, it seemed too crisp, too far away. Not blood — that had a wet and heavy sound to it that didn’t fit. But the Minotaur, yes! He saw red suddenly, startling in its clarity and aliveness. Red: a clean, powerful sound. He knew why it was a favorite color for artists, suddenly he just knew it, in the way you feel how delicious food tastes when you’re really hungry.

  And here was yellow, yellow like a yell, a flash, a changeable shape. He listened to see if yellow was in the water surrounding him. Maybe in the rush behind the drips. Once in a while there was a spray sound, a kind of whoosh and fall of water — yel-low, yel-low.

  Tommy would say he’d gone bananas, bananas without the peel, and that thought made him smile. Speaking of bananas, he knew he had fallen while walking next to the Cascade, a crazy fall. He’d slipped into some kind of secret space behind or under the rocks. He didn’t remember losing his balance — strange.

  He knew he’d been unconscious, and now had to find the strength to explore. Yellow — or was it yelling — might never be heard, he knew that, over the black of the water and the red of the rocks. Red? No red on rocks, but that was the hardness of the stone, the rolling R sounds. R-r-red. Run. Roar. Red.

  Yellow, black, red, yellow, black, red … better to ignore white, the light. He found himself slipping into sleep again, even though he was sitting up. Just a little rest … He lowered himself back onto one bruised arm and lay on his side, cheek on his shoulder. Cheek! What a funny bird-word, like a hopping or a chirping. Cheek, cheek!

  Then he heard something oddly unsoft, a crinkly sound coming from his pocket. Not his pentominoes — no, he’d know that sound anywhere. Not Miss Knowsley’s key. The chocolate bars he’d bought after lunch! He reached his hand slowly into his pocket, feeling the joy of plastic wrappings. Pulling out one bar, he began to open it, slowly, carefully. As there was no light, no white, he couldn’t risk dropping even one crumb. He felt around on the stone under his arm and realized it was flat, almost a floor. Better to roll onto his back and if the chocolate dropped, it would fall on top of him.

  Cho-co-late, cho-co-late: the sound of sugar, of rectangles and their crunchy kindness. As he opened the top, the first whiff of chocolate was the best smell ever. It was blue sky, it was air, it was cho-co-late. The word was almost alive.

  And the first bite! It was creamy and strong and more than delicious. It was a glimpse back into his old brain, his familiar mind. The sound language faded, and a more familiar way of thinking began to come back. Suddenly, the word black just sounded flat, like a word, and as he swallowed the last of the bar, he knew he’d fight to live.

  Slowly, slowly, he got up on his knees. He stretched his arms over his head. Nothing. Just the steady rushing and dripping of the water. And then his fingers touched stone, recoiled, touched again. It was hard to reach out in the dark and not imagine what you might touch. What if this was a pirate hideaway and he touched an old foot, an eye socket, a jaw — a bunch of bones in cloth, a person who had been trapped in here hundreds of years ago? A hard, cold lump of fear settled into his guts, and he pushed the thought away, forcing himself to think of numbers. Numbers and shapes always helped.

  He was dizzy, and sank back down. He’d work on another pentomino maze while he rested. But, no — mazes had dead ends, and he was in no mood for that. Maybe he’d play the Calder Game instead. He picked five of his favorite numbers and imagined them floating, their shapes connected by threads of light: 12 for his set of pentominoes and his age, 13 because other people were afraid of it but he wasn’t, 3 for his family and also for his friendship with Petra and Tommy, 60 for the number of squares in every twelve-piece pentomino rectangle, and 41 because it was one of the coolest primes.

  There, he did feel better. He could always rely on numbers.

  Back up on his knees, he touched irregular boulders on all sides and tried to calculate dimensions. This space might be about the size of the coat closet at home. The stone was part dry, part wet. Some water was running over the rock, and water meant a crack. Did that mean a crack big enough to let in air? Maybe it was night outside, and when day came, he’d see light.

  Light! It was hard to imagine. He thought if he saw light again, nothing could ever bother him. No problem would ever be a problem. He would be filled, forever, with the happiness of breathing and moving, of being alive. Nothing else.

  Then he thought suddenly about the weight of stone. What if he had fallen into a tiny stone trap, a place with only a little air? No! He tried as hard as he could not to think about being buried alive.

  He groped backward, in his thoughts, for that place of sound-language where the colors melted perfectly into sounds, and there was no past, no future. Only darkness, only sound.

  Black, black, black went the water surrounding him, but the thought was no longer perfect, it was flat and bleak. Black, black.

  The next thing he knew, he was seeing something besides darkness. A shape. A shape! It was a round, hard edge of stone, and the loveliest line he’d ever seen. He rolled toward it, a fierce headache now throbbing. My brain pounding against my skull is just like me stuck in this stone room, he thought: pound, pound, pound. He touched the gray line, and it was wet. He licked his hand, and put it back, and again, and again. Then he pushed his fingers against the crack with the light, but all was water. No air. He could see light, but light behind water.

  The tears welled up in his throat. He sank back down on the flat surface, trying to think. He rolled into a ball on his side and hugged his knees. His body was trying to comfort itself, keeping itself company, he realized. He patted his own shoulder and that felt good.

  Maybe he’d fallen inside his name. His parents had told him that he’d been named for the famous artist, yes, and also that the word calder was very old, perhaps thousands of years old, and meant a stony stream, or fast-moving water over stone. Maybe he would just become his name, sink back into water and stone, and one day the rocks would move or wear down, and some bones, candy wrappers, and pieces of yellow plastic —

  His pentominoes! He was up on his knees, fumbling in his pocket. He pulled out the L shape. Then he ran it carefully along the crack, slowly, pressing it as hard as he dared against the stone. A corner slid in and then stopped. He worked methodically, trying to fit the plastic and stone together in every possible combination. Whenever the pentomino seemed as though it might go in, he pushed with all of his strength, pushed until his arms shook.

  Then he had another idea. He rolled over on his back and slammed the bottom of his sneaker against the pentomino as hard as he could. First he missed. Missed again. Then snap! The pentomino broke off, and he heard the clatter of plastic on stone. He felt around with his fingers. A small piece was still wedged in the crack.

  He rested, his head now hammering mercilessly in his skull. He licked more water, this time directly off the rock beneath the crack.

  He wondered how long his air would last.

  Rest, he’d just rest for a few minutes. He pulled another pentomino out of his pocket. It was the W. W for wish, he thought to himself, and then wished with all his being that he could live. If this were a story, he realized, a story I was listening to or reading, I’d be angry. But I’m not.

  Strange, he thought, he’d had so many unfamiliar feelings and sensations in this little stone room. The idea of using pentominoes to make mazes suddenly seemed crazy, almost cruel. Why would anyone want to get lost on purpose? He vowed, if he got out, to use his pentominoes only to help find things. He’d invent a maze with no dead ends.

  He pushed the W into the crack and gave it another slam with his shoe, this time changing his angle. He thought his head would explode and he banged his knee hard, excruciatingly hard, but this time something wonderful happened: The W was gone. It was outside! He’d gotten it through the crack!

  By the
next day, Calder knew they must be hunting for him. He could only hope, and then hope some more. Hope. The word had a lonely, clueless sound to it. What if no one living knew about this hidden room? And what if no one had seen him fall? But no: That wasn’t possible.

  Before his line of light melted back to dark, he had eaten the last chocolate bar and pounded all of his pentominoes into the crack in the rocks. Both knees were bleeding, and the soles of his feet ached from kicking against rock. Most of his pentomino pieces had broken — he’d heard the snap and felt the sharp shards of plastic scattered around him. But he was sure that the I had gotten through, and perhaps the long part of the T. And the W, yes, the W. Someone would see the yellow.

  These pentominoes had done lots of thinking with him. He wondered how many of the sixty squares in his set had made it through the crack. This was his first set, a set that a distant relative in London, someone who had since moved, had sent him for his twelfth birthday. They had helped him to put ideas and numbers together in a magical way; they had been a tool unlike anything he’d ever known. Numbers. Numbers seemed so safe now, and so far away.

  By the time all was black again, he realized that it was warmer in his little cave. Not warmer, no, steamy. Airless.

  His headache was becoming close to unbearable. He licked water off a rock and curled up again into a ball, whimpering now, and tried to picture the clean-edged pieces in the cool, dark water of the Cascade. If only they landed in a shallow pool, if only they weren’t swept downstream, if only, if only.

  Wish, wish, wish. Suddenly the word was beautiful, fluid and free in the water and stone and darkness that had become his world. Wish, like the sound of wings. His heart was pounding, and he felt the word beating in his veins: Wish, wish, wish.

  The hospital was buzzing the night the Boy was found, and the wind continued to blow, as if intent on pushing everyone involved into a new place.

  Calder was in critical condition. He was severely dehydrated and very weak, having eaten nothing but his three chocolate bars for the last three days. Still unconscious, he was covered with scratches and bruises but didn’t seem to have any serious injuries. His dad sat by his bed all night. He murmured to him, sang songs, and patted his hand, his head, his arm. Already thin, Calder was now a mere shadow, barely disturbing the layer of blankets that covered him.

  Just down the corridor, Arthur Wish had slipped back into a comatose state. His aunt sat by the side of his bed chatting and knitting, and swore that he was listening to her. She told him the happy news about finding Calder — loudly, and many times over. She apologized for having been grumpy with him about the sculpture.

  With neither Calder nor Arthur Wish able to talk, the questions swept through the hospital, and then through the town, like leaves in the wind.

  Word spread at the post office when it opened the next morning: The American boy had been recovered, the man found under the willow was actually Posy Knowsley’s nephew and the original owner of the Minotaur, and the sculpture itself was apparently lying beneath the bridge, at the bottom of the Queen Pool. Two local men had been arrested, and were being held by the police. They claimed an American had hired them to move the sculpture and had then abandoned them. No one knew who that American was. Americans! The town seemed to be full of them these days.

  If anyone in Woodstock already knew the news, or knew more than that, they kept quiet about it.

  Interestingly, the residents looked radiant that morning. There was whispering, however — at doorways, over fences, on street corners — and all remained careful not to speak around the police.

  And then, just as Miss Knowsley got ready to leave the hospital and head back to feed Pummy and get some sleep, she was arrested.

  Her eyes darting back and forth, her face pinched and angry, she was seen leaving the hospital in the back of a Thames Valley Police cruiser.

  “The thanks I get for being a good auntie! The idea of spying in my house! How dare you? Justice, indeed! My Artie got kidnapped and coshed over the head, he did!”

  The two police officers in the front seat slunk down like bad boys. Every third or fourth word, Miss Knowsley slapped the seat next to her. If she had had claws, the cushion would have been in shreds. If she’d had a tail, it would have been lashing.

  Calder wasn’t yet awake, but because of his age the doctors felt sure that he’d make a full recovery. They were more worried about the psychological trauma he might have suffered than about any long-term physical damage.

  Walter Pillay had given permission for Tommy and Petra to stay in Calder’s room, so that they, too, would be present when he opened his eyes. Calder’s mom was so thrilled to hear the news about Calder that she could do nothing but laugh and cry, laugh and cry. She still wasn’t able to get out of her hospital bed in Hyde Park, but doctors had told her that in time her cracked disk would heal. She spent all day admiring the clouds floating outside her window, thinking that they had never looked more extraordinary. She couldn’t wait to have her husband and son home again.

  Meanwhile, Woodstock murmurings continued in kitchens and on sidewalks throughout the town. News about Arthur Wish and his gift had spread. But what did it mean? And why all the secrecy?

  Yes, the British police had been researching Mr. Wish, and had discovered the things Walter Pillay had found. But were Art Wish’s good deeds just a cover for something darker? And why exactly did he like that troublemaker artist Banksy? A copy of Banksy’s book Wall and Piece was found in Art Wish’s hotel room.

  Until Calder awoke, no one knew if Mr. Wish’s accident had anything to do with Calder’s. Was Mr. Wish, as Walter Pillay suspected, the man Calder had been shaking hands with in the square? Why were they both near the Cascade that day? Had a third person — or possibly a group of people — tried to murder them both?

  Banksy, of course, could not be reached.

  The police also wondered how much Miss Knowsley really knew about her wealthy American nephew. Could she possibly have been kicking up a fuss about the Minotaur as a screen for his activities? Could he have offered her money in return for local camouflage or help? The police had found scribbles on a pad in her kitchen, drawings of the top of the Cascade and a gap in the rocks. Had these been done the night Calder was found, as she claimed, or several days earlier? And what did the money signs that trailed down the side of the page mean? Was it only that she was worried about paying the gas bills that winter, as she’d told the police? Or had she played a part in helping her nephew to get rid of the boy?

  Perhaps Calder had stumbled on undercover activity of some kind. Maybe someone needed him to have that accident.

  Even if Miss Knowsley had helped her nephew without realizing the depth of her involvement, she was a suspect. At least until the boy, and hopefully her nephew, awoke and vindicated her.

  Everyone was waiting for Calder to speak.

  Petra, Tommy, and Walter Pillay were playing a game of cards at the foot of Calder’s bed when he awoke.

  “Hi, you guys,” he said slowly, his voice barely a whisper. “Hi.”

  The response was thunderous and bouncy and tearful. Calder apologized over and over to his dad, and kept saying, “I can’t believe you’re here!” to Petra and Tommy.

  Although a nurse tried to keep him quiet, a member of the police was allowed in, and Calder shared the bare bones of the story:

  He and Arthur Wish had been talking by the Minotaur. Yes, he’d introduced himself to Calder. Mr. Wish, after seeing Calder’s mazes and listening to his thoughts about the Calder Game, then explained what he was doing. He told Calder he liked the idea of the boy playing a part.

  He’d identified himself as the collector who had given the Minotaur to Woodstock, but said that he was troubled by how much the residents seemed to dislike it. He explained that he’d been listening to their comments for a couple of weeks, and had decided to do something about it, something that hopefully would be a successful surprise. He’d hired some men to move the sculpture
the following night.

  He invited Calder to help him decide on a possible new home for the work of art. Would he take a walk through Blenheim Park with him the next day? Art Wish said he hoped that seeing the Minotaur in the park, with more space around it, would make the residents of Woodstock get to know it in a more accepting way. Calder loved the idea.

  He remembered that he and Art Wish had been walking near the top of the Cascade when Calder had slipped. Or had he stepped on something that moved beneath him? He really wasn’t sure. Falling was the last thing he remembered before waking up in his tiny stone prison.

  The detective who’d been listening and taking notes looked up. “Didn’t feel a push, did you?” he asked. Calder frowned.

  “No,” he said slowly. “I wasn’t pushed. I fell.”

  “Whose idea was it to walk all the way to the Cascade?” the detective asked.

  Calder thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. I think it was Art Wish’s idea — but we both wanted to go there.”

  The detective nodded his head, as if to say, “Just what I thought.”

  Over the next five days, Calder stayed in the hospital, slowly regaining his strength. Arthur Wish remained in a comatose state.

  Miss Knowsley was allowed to return to her home on Alehouse Lane, much to Pummy’s delight, but was kept under house arrest. The police felt it was wise until they could corroborate Calder’s story.

  The name of the young girl in black was Georgia Rip. She brought Miss Knowsley groceries and was permitted by the police to stay on in the house. Her father, Nashton Rip, was one of the two stonemasons currently under arrest for stealing the sculpture. The other three men hadn’t turned themselves in, and Mr. Rip and his partner still wouldn’t supply their names. Both Tommy and Petra had told the police that they’d heard people moving around in the park that night, in the woods and by the maze, but that didn’t help in identifying the other thieves.